


& the wind inside

by lupinely



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, i tried to work thru my emotional suffering & stolen century trauma thoughts but it didnt work, thanks mcelroys.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 23:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: Magnus and Taako remember something that the others never knew.





	& the wind inside

**Author's Note:**

> i apparently cannot write anymore, but have this anyway. i can't wait for the mcelroys to smash episode 69 of the adventure zone over my head this thursday, killing me instantly

 

 

 

 

They landed on this planet just moments ago. A white-out sky stretches above a flat endless landscape, the only aberration to be found at the meeting place between the slate-glass sea and gray shore. The silence is immense, bigger than anything, and the planet itself so huge that its horizon reaches up and up and up before finally touching featureless sky. There is no sign of life anywhere on the planet—no sign of the light of creation—again.

Davenport stands motionless, letting the gentle waves of an immense planet with no moon idly lap at his feet, his ankles, as he gazes out towards the impossible nauseating horizon, silent. Lup is clenching and unclenching her hands into fists, staring at the same spot. Barry and Lucretia share a glance, just a brief one, and Magnus can sense their despair, veiled and controlled though it is. Taako doesn’t say or do anything, just stands there and lets the wind do with him what it will. Merle kicks a rock and it splashes, loudly, into the quiet water.

“Well,” he says, “fuck.”

Lup screams something wordless and shoots a fireball into the sky: orange, magnificent, useless. It arcs above them like a lonely emergency flare, marking out their position in the middle of nothing, before she turns around and trudges up the gangway into the ship. Barry and Davenport follow her, then Lucretia, then Merle.

What cycle is this? The seventh, Magnus thinks; seven fucking lonely years etching out an existence on the edges of reality, of life, of happiness, of time. They have no idea how many more years remain before them.

“Are you okay?” he asks Taako.

Taako looks down at the sand: gray, gravelly, unsuited to life of any sort. He picks up a flat rock, studies it, and then, with great precision, skips it over the surface of the glass sea. It hops four times, five, then disappears from sight.

“Oh,” he says, “you know,” and the two of them stand there in silence.

After a long while, Magnus says, “Let’s go inside.”

Taako follows Magnus up the gangway into the Starblaster, through one of its hallways, and into Magnus' quarters, which Magnus had not quite been expecting but also somehow does not surprise him. He sits as his desk, and Taako unceremoniously flops himself onto Magnus’ bed. He lies on his back, apparently staring at nothing, quite motionless and silence. Magnus has grown more than used to this sort of behavior in the past few cycles of life on the Starblaster. Taako probably spends the least amount of time in his own quarters out of any of them; if there is company to be sought, he will seek it, even if only to do nothing while in the presence of someone else. Magnus—much more used to spending time alone—found this irritating at first, then tolerable, and now if Taako isn’t around it rather feels as if something is missing.

“Fuck’s sake,” Taako says at last into the not-uncomfortable silence.

Magnus nods, realizes Taako cannot see him from where he is lying on his back on the bed, and then says, “Yeah.”

Taako rolls over and props himself up on his elbows so that he can study Magnus intently. This is another thing that Taako tends to do; he likes people, and he likes knowing all there is to know about them. Magnus has not yet been able to grow used to this behavior, though, and as he pointedly does not return Taako’s gaze, he can feel the tips of his ears grow warm. Luckily there is no way Taako can tell. Probably.

“You think we’ll find it this time?”

Magnus doesn’t have to ask what Taako means. What else is there that any of them spends so much time thinking about? Davenport obsesses over it, as do Barry and Lup. They have no idea where the light of creation landed this cycle—and this planet, massive as it is, will be unwilling to give up its secrets freely.

Magnus shakes his head in a sort of helpless gesture. “Does it matter?”

“We don’t even know, is the worst part,” Taako says. “For all we know, we’re just running out the clock, and whatever is going to happen will happen and there’s nothing any of us on this stupid spaceship are gonna be able to do about it.”

He pauses for a moment, studying his hands. Then he says after a while, “Sure feels like it matters, though.”

Magnus sighs. “Yeah,” he says; “it does.”

 

 

 

Magnus catches Taako in the kitchen of the Starblaster one day—one year—everything measured out in years rather than moments, hours, days, weeks (Magnus can’t remember the last time he marked the date of anything as other than whatever cycle it occurred during)—and he is alone, which is unusual, because usually Lup is with him. He looks despondent and distracted, an empty pot of water boiling on the stovetop, just sitting there churning while Taako looks at nothing.

It is rare to see Taako like this—if Magnus is really seeing him, if this really is the genuine emotion that Taako is grappling with right now. It’s hard to tell, with him. Taako, for all that he is sharp and forward with himself and honest, is guarded, too, more so in many ways than anyone else on the Starblaster.

You’d think after so many years, they would all start just being honest with each other. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The way time wears you down, not like water smoothing a rough stone but like sediment burying the rock beneath it, so that everything goes still, and unchanging, and unacknowledged. Rather than change them, this poisoned cycle of time holds them captive, like bugs in amber, and only every once in a while can any of them ever break free of it and draw breath and breathe for what feels like the first time in forever.

Every year, the same hell. Every moment, the same purpose. The same loss. The same grief. Unspoken. Magnus rubs the back of his hand across his forehead, once, just for the reminder that some things are physical, are real, exist in this plane and are anchored, _here,_ and matter, here. He knocks on the doorframe with his knuckles and watches as Taako starts, looks up, and the grief leaves his expression like sunlight shining through glass, changing colors as it goes. Taako seems to suddenly realize that the pot of water is boiling, and has been boiling, but he cannot seem to remember what he was going to use it for. He looks around the kitchen. “You see the pasta?”

Magnus hands him the box and watches Taako dump it into the pot. It foams white, then calms.

“You look like shit,” says Taako.

“Thanks.”

Taako shrugs as if to say _my pleasure._

“Where’s Lup?”

“Out. I think with Barry.”

“Oh.”

Taako closes his hand over the spoon, sets it down, and doesn’t let it go. Magnus watches this. It doesn’t feel like a moment, this point in time that they are existing in. It stretches out to eternity in all directions; as if it encompasses, somehow, all the goddamn time they have spent on this ship so far, running, running, running.

“Lup said,” Taako says, “well, she was talking about—I don’t know. Whatever shit she and Barry spend their nerdass time talking about. And it made me think about what I guess I’m always thinking about.”

Magnus waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. “What’s that?”

“It’s like—” Taako seems to struggle to find the words. “We’re not _people_ anymore.”

Magnus doesn’t say anything.

“People don’t live this way,” Taako says. “People don’t...live the same year, endlessly, except their minds keep going while their bodies start over. People don’t—land in one plane of existence, and see the sights there, and meet the people, and then watch them die and hop on over to the next realm of wherever the fuck they are now. People don’t _do_ this. So what are we?”

There’s silence. Finally Taako looks up at Magnus, and he looks exhausted; he looks exactly how Magnus feels. “Dumb, huh?” he says. “Guess Barry’s been rubbing off on me.”

Magnus can only shake his head and stare at the boiling water. Constant change; metamorphosis; transformation. He doesn’t remember what that feels like. “When this is all over,” he says, “I think we’ll get the chance to be people again. I think we’ll get the chance....” He trails off.

Taako meets his gaze, just for a moment, and it is a moment that tests the edges of eternity. “To live,” he says, and the two of them contemplate the pasta until Lucretia comes in to help them set the table for dinner.

 

 

 

Magnus’ quarters again, another cycle again, Taako with his head on Magnus’ lap again as he stretches out on Magnus’ bed and talks at length about some magical shit that Magnus does not understand. He talks with his hands, animate, making connections that Magnus cannot follow, stringing theoretical needles with the precision of a master seamstress. Magnus watches the motion of his hands, the way they make shadows against the walls. He watches the space between the motions.

“Hey,” Taako says sharply after a minute. “Are you even listening to me?”

Magnus shakes his head.

“Typical,” Taako grumps, “everyone goes out for the day and I get left behind with Muscles Mcgee over here, who doesn’t know a transmutation spell from an evocation cantrip no matter how many goddamn times I explain it to him, I don’t know why I even bother—”

Magnus bends down and kisses him.

Taako instantly shuts up, and freezes. There is a long moment where neither of them moves, and then Taako reacts, putting his hands on either side of Magnus’ face and pulling him down and kissing him back, soundly, so that they both have to come up for air sooner than they would like. Magnus’ heart is pounding.

“Fuck,” Taako says. He is staring up at Magnus, inscrutable but also as if he can’t read Magnus either, like he doesn’t quite know what to say. “Been a long fucking time, huh?”

“Time is really all any of us have got,” Magnus agrees. Taako sits up and pushes Magnus back against the headboard and kisses him again, and again, and again, until neither of them is thinking about the light of creation, or the Hunger, or time, or the end of everything; until they are only thinking about each other.

 

 

 

“But really,” Taako says another time when they are lying next to each other and Taako is inspecting the hair on Magnus’ chest, his head propped on his elbow. “Did you ever...” He makes a face, like that will explain it.

“You’ll need to be more precise,” Magnus says, even though he knows exactly what Taako is getting at. He likes watching Taako squirm, and he gets to see it so rarely.

“You know,” Taako says. “Have sex, since we’ve started this mission.”

“Who’s there to have sex with?”

“Aside from me?” Taako preens a little, watching from the corner of his eye to see Magnus’ reaction. Magnus laughs, because it is funny, and because Taako likes it when he makes Magnus laugh. “I mean, I guess you’re right that everyone else on the ship is out—Barry is a nerd lord, bless his heart, and so is my sister for having him. Lucretia, well, pretty sure she’s a lesbian, and damn _that_ has got to suck on a spaceship with one other woman who is currently in a committed relationship. I’m pretty sure Davenport would have sex with the mission if he could, and Merle is...Merle. But I’m sure there have been opportunities other times—planets where the people were nice to us, or whatever. You wonder if anyone is sleeping with the locals?”

“Have you been?”

The humor goes out of Taako, just a little bit, but enough so that Magnus knows the lightness of the moment is gone, if it was ever really there—all of them just clinging to brief moments of levity in a reality that is unendurable in its darkness. “No,” he says. “How could I? Knowing what we know....”

“Yeah,” Magnus says. He curls his arm tighter around Taako, just a bit, and pretends not to notice the way Taako leans into him, just a bit.

“So it’s been....” Taako counts. “Seventeen years then?”

“Yeah,” Magnus says. “I guess.”

“Damn,” Taako says. He stares off at nothing. “Hell of a dry spell.”

Neither of them mentions the way it doesn’t feel like seventeen years—the way it feels both longer and shorter, as if it has been just moments since they left their homeplanet, or millennia—the way time doesn’t run smooth for them anymore, but instead curves and turns in on itself, makes ripples, ties itself in knots until any sort of linear reckoning becomes meaningless, without purpose. Seventeen years? It may as well have been seventeen lifetimes. And different things have become more important than whatever used to matter all that time ago. Things like escape, and survival, and resistance, and light. Things like darkness and the end. Things like connection and love, in ways that never would have made sense before, in ways that are immeasurably more complicated and profound and incomprehensible. As if they are getting closer to the heart of everything, the seven of them, and these are the things that remain, standing stark in the darkness.

Taako sighs. “Bunch of depressing bullshit,” he says, and he rolls over on top of Magnus, pinning him in place with his knees on either side of Magnus’ hips. “You sleepy?”

“Not yet,” Magnus says, and he runs his hands along the bare skin of Taako’s thighs until Taako slaps his hands away, laughing.

 

 

 

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing does. The seven of them standing together against everything; the seven of them, alone. They all fit against each other in different ways, sometimes in ways that barely make sense; but they all fit. All of them bound by the same truth, the same reality: they can never go home again. And they can never stop running.

There are moments of joy. Watching Lucretia laugh and play with Fisher. Lup beating them all at a game of cards and nearly setting the couch on fire in triumph. Davenport spending an entire day speaking in rhyme just to piss them all off. Pieces of time, moments here and there that matter, that still mean something, even when time, for the seven of them, has become essentially meaningless.

And Taako. There is a lot of joy, with Taako.

 

 

 

“You know,” Taako says, sometime around cycle eighty-three, “I only kissed you that first time on a lark. Now look at us. We’re nearly as disgusting as Lup and Barry.”

“That's impossible,” Magnus says. “And excuse me, but I kissed _you._ Don’t get that twisted.”

“If you say so. So many decades go by, maybe you get confused.” There is a smile tucked in the corner of Taako’s mouth. Magnus sticks his tongue out at him. “But on a lark, right?”

“Maybe so.” Magnus leans down and kisses Taako. “Not anymore, though.”

 

 

 

One cycle, Taako dies. This isn’t exactly unusual; the seven of them die rather more often than any of them would like, but this time is different because it happens fairly early in the year, and he is the only one, the whole time, who is gone.

It is hardest on Lup, though she tries not to show it. Magnus doesn’t know how to reach out to her, how to tell her that he understands, at least a little bit. Everything is different without Taako there. There’s still Merle of course, who tries to lift Magnus’ spirits—he might be the only one who really notices just how down Magnus is—and Lucretia and Davenport and Barry, all doing their best to keep going, to keep fighting. It is different when any one of them isn’t there, of course, when any one of them dies and the others have to keep going, hoping and believing because they have to that when this cycle ends everything will reset as it has countless times beforehand and they will see their friend again. But without Taako, there is less to smile about. The heart is gone from Lup, and it feels like all the levity, all the light that travels on their ship, is just gone, as well. Gone wherever Taako went.

Magnus is sitting alone on the deck of the Starblaster one night, staring out towards the distant lights of a nearby city. He is not thinking; his mind is blessedly clear, empty, blank, and he just sits there and drinks in the horizon, the crisp dusk breeze, the feeling of scale and emptiness and space all around him in every direction.

Soft footsteps, which hesitate briefly then continue until Lup appears and sits beside Magnus. The two of them lean against the rail of the deck with their feet hanging over the edge, over nothingness. She is silent, her short dark hair ruffling in the breeze.

“You look beat,” she says, tilting her head to catch Magnus in her gaze. Looking at her doesn’t hurt the way Magnus expected it would—she is Taako’s twin, his sister, and there are features in her face that Magnus recognizes from Taako’s, but she is a person, a being all her own as Taako is. The two of them are similar, bound at the heart, but not the same, and seeing her now is actually a comfort, a relief, rather than a painful reminder. “You been getting enough sleep?”

Magnus thinks of his bed without Taako in it. “Probably not.”

“Me neither.” She leans against the railing and gazes down at the dark landscape beneath them, pensive and grieving. It’s strange to grieve for someone you will see again soon—fingers crossed. But death is still death, and it still hurts.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says after a long time, into the quiet stillness.

Lup stifles a sort of laugh. “Yeah.” She closes her eyes. “Barry keeps trying to get me to talk about it. It’s like, what is there to say? He’s my brother, and he’s gone, and it fucking sucks and I hate it. I hate this goddamn planet for killing him, and I hate the Hunger for doing this to us in the first place.” She pauses. “Lotta hatred right now, I guess.”

“Me too,” Magnus says. He thinks of the Hunger, of the parlay sessions Merle has been having with it in order to learn more of it, of the fact that they seem to know nothing and it seems to know everything. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore.

“What’s it like having a twin?” he asks Lup. “I didn’t have any siblings. I’ve always wondered.”

“Pain in the damn ass,” says Lup, and she opens her eyes, a bright slash of a smile across her face. “But I don’t know where I’d be without him. Don’t know where I am.” She pauses, thinking. “It’s not like that for all siblings, I guess. But it always was for us. I wouldn’t be on this rust bucket if it weren’t for him.” She slaps the Starblaster’s hull, but fondly, and Magnus can see that there are tears forming in her eyes. He pretends not to notice.

“I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you.”

“Yeah,” Lup says, and sighs. “Always stealing my snappy one liners and passing them off as his own.” And she smiles, tearfully, but with happiness, too, and leans her head against Magnus’ shoulder.

When the cycle ends, Magnus holds his breath, staring at the space on the Starblaster where Taako should reappear. And he does. Lup runs to him and throws her arms around him. “Miss me?” Taako says, and he grins as the others all gather around him to welcome him home. He looks at Magnus over his sister’s head and smiles, and Magnus breathes again for the first time in months.

 

 

 

They don’t really talk about it. They spend time together. Taako makes Magnus laugh, Magnus makes him laugh, he kisses Taako’s forehead and his eyelids and his mouth and his collarbone and they fall asleep sometimes in the same bed, the same quarters of the ship, and somehow no one else on the crew notices, and somehow it doesn’t seem important for any of them to know. It is what it is. They are what they are.

Magnus was twenty when they started this mission. He doesn’t know if he is still twenty, or if he is one hundred and twenty now, or whether it even matters. They’ve tricked the Hunger and the world is tearing itself apart below them in search for the relics but the world is _alive_ still, it exists, and that means they won, and that means it’s over. That means this is what there is: Taako’s mouth when he smiles, the sharp cut of his laugh, the way he teases Magnus mercilessly even as his gaze softens when Magnus smiles. This is what there is.

And then it isn’t anymore. Then there isn’t anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 _**[[???]]** _  
_**[[???]]** _  
_**[[???]]** _

 

 

 

 

 

This is what loss can feel like. A nothingness that you don’t even recognize as a loss: a nothingness that simply is, and pervades everything, becomes everything.

 

 

 

The elf wizard tilts his head at Magnus, his eyes dark, heavy-lidded but shining. “Guess we’re gonna be working together then,” he says, indicating the help wanted poster they just fought another group of adventurers in the bar for. The dwarf who had also sauntered over to join them is still bickering with the others. “Shall I introduce myself? You probably know me. I’m Taako. You know, from tv.”

Magnus stares at him, then shrugs. “Sorry, can’t say I do.”

The wizard—Taako—rolls his eyes and tugs one hand through his long dark hair. “Can’t work on everyone,” he says, sounding disappointed, and he eyes Magnus up and down. “Who are you?”

“Magnus Burnsides,” Magnus says, and holds out his hand for Taako to shake; he does, and there is nothing familiar about it—nothing familiar at all.

 

 

 

“Hey,” Magnus says one night at the Bureau of Balance headquarters, the three of them sitting around a table in Merle’s quarters, playing cards, “do you guys remember—”

And he stops short, uncertain of what the hell he was even going to say. But he knows there’s something. There’s something.

Do you remember—

_—what?_

Merle looks up over his hand of cards, which he is holding close to his face and scrutinizing intensely. Taako, on the other hand, looks bored. “Gonna have to give us more to work with there, buddy.”

Magnus shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“Quit trying to distract us so you can cheat.” As Taako says it, he slides a card out of the middle of the deck with mage hand. Merle doesn’t notice. Magnus does, but he is too busy trying to figure out what the fuck just happened in his head to even care. Taako beats them all soundly, three rounds in a row, cheating the entire time, and Magnus can’t shake the feeling that he has felt exactly this feeling before. A long time ago.

 

 

 

Angus, laughing as Taako teaches him a new spell. Magnus doesn’t know what spell it is, nor what is involved with learning magic, or teaching it, but ever since he found out that Taako has been giving Angus magic lessons, he has made it his mission to watch them at it when he can. There is something calming and familiar about it; something reassuring, as if to say, yes, the whole world is fucking going to hell, and we don’t know what’s going on, but sometimes things still matter, things like this still happen: we teach and we learn from each other and we grow.

“That’s pretty good,” Taako says when Angus casts the spell—some sort of evocation magic—and a flare of energy surges from the tip of his wand. Angus and Magnus both know this to be high praise from Taako; Angus beams, and Magnus can’t help but smile at Angus and his case of semi-hero worship.

Taako braces his umbrella against his shoulder and tilts his head at Angus. “That’s enough for today, yeah? Are you hungry?”

Angus slides his wand into his pocket and nods. Taako glances over at Magnus. “Wanna come?”

Magnus, who had not been expecting the invitation, nods without realizing, and the three of them set off across the lunar base towards the cafeteria.

“You’re getting pretty good, Ango,” Magnus says as they walk. “How’s it feel?”

“Well...” Angus says, and he slants his gaze at Taako for a moment. “Humbling, really.”

Magnus expected Taako to laugh at that, or roll his eyes, but instead he doesn’t. “That’s surely part of it,” he says.

“It must be fun too though,” Magnus says. “I mean, accessing all the infinite mysteries and powers of the universe? Channeling that through some shitty stick or umbrella?” Taako does roll his eyes now. “Seems to me like it’d be pretty sick. I just sort of bash things over and over until they stop moving.”

“At least you’re quite proficient at it,” Taako says gravely, and they both burst out laughing.

Angus watches the two of them, smiling, his glasses flashing in the setting sun. “Can I ask you a question, sirs? How long did you know each other before you joined the Bureau?”

“We met just before we joined the Bureau.” Taako does not meet Magnus’ gaze. “Why?”

“You just seem like such good friends,” Angus says. “You and Merle also. I’ve never had such close friends like that, I don’t think.”

Magnus puts his hand on Angus’ shoulder and smiles down at him. “You do now,” he says, and Angus beams, and tears spring to his eyes before he hurriedly wipes them away. They enter the cafeteria together, Magnus and Taako’s gazes meeting just for a moment, as if to say to each other, _kids, right?_ Brush it off. Brush it all off. But Magnus knows, also, that Angus is right in a sense—that it really does feel sometimes as if he and Taako and Merle all found each other, found shelter, found haven, and when you think about it, it doesn’t make sense—but then again, does everything have to?

 

 

 

Taako stands by their campfire in the woods of the Felicity Wilds, stripping efficiently, carelessly, trading damp soggy clothes for drier ones, and when he peels back his tunic from his side, revealing bare brown skin, Magnus thinks, there’s a scar there, I know it, and sure enough in another moment it is revealed, shining in the flickering light, long and thin and old but _there,_ really there, and there is no way for Magnus to have known that.

Magnus’ mouth goes dry. Merle is snoring in a bedroll five feet away. Magnus asks Taako, “Hey—how’d you get that?” and gestures at the scar.

Taako glances down at it. “Geez,” he says, “fuck if I know,” and starts getting dressed again, oblivious to Magnus’ discomfort, his agony, how the fuck can he know these things, how can he see these places, different worlds, the red robe on the parchment with his face, how can he tell any of them about it when it doesn’t make _sense_ and he doesn’t know why he knows what the scars on Taako’s body look like and what they _feel_ like. He clenches his hands at his side and rolls back into his bedroll and stares up at the sky, clouded over, navy blue, impassive, until all is quiet and the fire beside them slowly dies.

He trusts these people with his life, Taako and Merle. And sometimes he doesn't really know why. And the rest of the time he does: because they're good people, because in this past year they have been through so much together. You can't off shake bonds like that easily, Magnus thinks. That much he knows to be true.

 

 

 

And loss can also feel like this.

 

 

 

Lucretia, thirty years older but time still hasn’t fully caught up with her yet, leaning on her white oak staff, grief. Magnus remembers things that don’t make sense. He remembers things that seem impossible—yet it is this, out of everything, out of hopping from plane of existence to the next for decades, for a century, fleeing a Hunger greater than all the darkness that exists, _this_ memory, this loss is what still doesn’t make sense, what hurts—

It hurts like what happened to Julia hurt and still hurts, and at that he shuts down, closes in on himself, forcing everything to stop. No more remembering. No more. There’s a fucking universe to save.

Taako meets Magnus’ gaze briefly. Don’t look, Magnus thinks, don’t look, but of course he does, of course he fucking looks, and the panic and incredulity and fucking immensity of grief that he sees in Taako’s eyes is too much. Turn away. Put your hand on your weapon, heft the weight of your shield. Don’t think about this thing you are remembering that no one else knew, no one else but Taako, that Lucretia erased without even realizing it, without even knowing it was there to destroy. Don’t think about the person you were in love with a lifetime ago, for a lifetime. Don’t think about what’s next.

 

 

 

The worst part about it all is that it makes sense.

Magnus likes Taako—and, apparently, always has. For decades and decades. He likes him as a person, as a friend, as a comrade in arms, as a colleague, as an ally, as a lover. And now, with all his memories collected, put to rights—one hundred and thirty years’ worth, all told—he can see the pieces of it fitting together. He remembers Taako, during cycle fifty-seven of their hundred year mission, reclining with his spellbook while Magnus worked out nearby, hitting the punching bag they had on the ship over and over again. He remembers Taako looking at him from the corner of his eye, first coyly, then flirtily, then shamelessly, pulling an exaggerated lip bite and dropping his gaze until Magnus couldn’t stand it anymore and went over and kissed him and Taako laughed at him for it. And he remembers, seven months ago, Taako walking in on him shirtless in his quarters and quite obviously giving him the once over, and then the two of them pretending it never happened. It’s little things like that, patterns repeated, across centuries of time, lightyears of distance.

Would they eventually have come back to each other again? Magnus wonders. They did find each other again—but as friends, as allies. It had taken them time, during their lost century...but Magnus isn’t sure whether the same outcome can be generated twice. Not in this universe, with all its chaos. And he is different now. They both are. He had a life, had Julia, a family, then lost her. That sort of wound cuts you in ways that you don’t expect, in ways that take time to fully learn and understand and navigate. And now this new wound—the pain of not only six friendships lost but a love, too—clouds over everything and makes certainty impossible.

But that, too, has always been true.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks. They had time their together—a hundred years of it. Him and Taako, and all of the seven of them aboard the Starblaster as well. In in a lot of ways, there is nothing more you can ask for from life than that.

Right?

 

 

 

Taako corners Magnus right before the five of them, Lucretia and Davenport and Merle and Taako and Magnus, step aboard the Starblaster to meet their final fate. The end, at last, of their long disjointed journey. There is no avoiding him. There never was.

“So,” Taako says quietly, as the spaceship hums to life all around them for the first time in a decade. He looks exhausted but determined, clinging to his glaive and standing before Magnus completely without affectation, without conceit.

“So,” Magnus says in agreement.

Taako smiles. Quietly, gently, without ceremony, he slips his free hand into one of Magnus’ and squeezes his fingers. An apology, an acknowledgement, a holding on and letting go all at once.

“How do you feel?” Magnus asks, because he can’t think of anything else, and he doesn’t know what to say.

Taako thinks on it for a long moment. Finally: “Like a person,” he says, as if he is marveling at it, as if he can’t believe it. “We’re finally people again.”

The two of us. Neither of them says it, but they both think it.

“It’s not over yet,” Magnus says.

“No.” Taako smiles at him, sadly, and releases his hand; Magnus can still feel his touch, a century’s worth of it, layered down on him like the sediment of time, like a promise made and kept despite not knowing it was a promise, despite not knowing all that would happen to try and stop him from keeping it. “Not yet.”

“Hey,” Magnus says, right before Taako makes to turn away from him to join the others on the Starblaster.

Taako turns back and meets his gaze. Steady, even. He leans against his glaive, looking composed and determined and gorgeous. Just like Magnus remembers.

“I’m glad we remember all of it now,” Magnus says, feeling stupid, knowing he has to say it anyway. “Even though it hurts like hell.”

Taako’s smile is generous and amused and a little bit teasing, but warm. “Me too,” Taako says. “Now can we _please_ go stop the Hunger from consuming all of reality so that we’ll have time in the future to figure all this crap out?”

Magnus smiles and says, “Deal.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
